Prior art FIGS. 1, 3, and 4 show a known stripping blade 10, FIG. 3 being an enlarged view of a portion of the blade shown in FIG. 1. Blade 10 includes: a body of tool quality steel 11; a cutting opening 12 comprising a sharpened blade section; and a tooling attachment section 18 for connecting blade 10 to a stripping machine. Cutting opening 12 includes: first and second cutting edges 14,15 formed along a compound angle 13. Compound angle 13 extends across the thickness of body 11. As is best shown in FIGS. 3 and 4, second cutting edges 15 converge to a vertex 16. Cutting edges 14 and 15 include a respective angle of convergence A,B with angle A being less than angle B, as is shown in FIG. 3. When two blades 10 are brought together in a conventional wire stripping operation, as shown in FIG. 4, a conductor 19 is disposed in the cutting openings for the purpose of stripping the conductor, preferably, without nicking the conductor during the stripping operation. Conductor 19 includes insulation 19a therearound, but, as the blades 10 are brought together, four areas of insulation 19b,19c remain uncut by blades 10. Such uncut areas 19b,19c are undesirable because, as the stripping blades move the slug of insulation away from the insulation which is to remain, slivers of insulation may extend along the sides of conductor 19. These slivers of insulation create manufacturing problems as they are likely to become lodged in a crimp barrel of a terminal during a crimping process, thereby compromising the quality of the crimp. Moreover, if the conductor is to be soldered rather than crimped, the slivers of insulation will negatively effect the quality of the solder joint. Further, because the total area of insulation to be cut increases with increasing wire size, the likelihood of the appearance of uncut insulation slivers increases proportionately with increasing wire size.
Prior art FIGS. 2 and 5 show a V-type blade 20 for stripping wires. Blade 20 includes: a body of tool quality steel 21; a cutting opening 22 comprising a sharpened blade section; and a tooling attachment section 28 for connecting blade 20 to a stripping machine. Cutting edges 24 extend along a compound angle 23, and converge to a vertex 26. When two blades 20 are brought together in a conventional stripping operation to strip a conductor 29 having insulation 29a, four areas of uncut insulation 29b,29c remain around conductor 29 Such uncut areas of insulation are likewise disadvantageous for the reasons given above in respect of stripping blade 10.
To overcome the foregoing problems, the present invention provides a universal wire stripping blade for stripping a range of wire sizes. The universal stripping blade of the present invention reduces the total area of uncut insulation and substantially eliminates two areas of uncut insulation when stripping relatively large size wires, and otherwise reduces the overall area of uncut insulation during the stripping of relatively smaller gauge wires.